93: Menopause: Catalyst for a Healthier Lifestyle

“I don’t know that we’re in a culture that supports a woman taking care of herself first. It’s really something that needs to be taught and I think probably the biggest thing that needs to be taught is self love and self compassion. I think we know how to be compassionate toward other people but I don’t think we know how to use compassion on ourselves, how to be kind to ourselves.”

Dr. Deb Butler is a board-certified chiropractor and acupuncturist, a certified nutritionist and master life and weight loss coach who helps women from all walks of life going through menopause end their struggle with weight. Dr. Deb Butler utilizes a blend of brain science, nutrition, physiology, life coaching and life lessons to help clients embrace real weight loss starting from the inside. Her personal experience with lifelong dieting and weight loss programs informs her refreshing approach to menopause.

When her lifelong struggle with her weight collided with the arrival of menopause, Dr. Deb realized how misguided her perception of both had been all along. Through research, courses and plenty of exploration, she has constructed a program to reframe how one views weight, balance and oneself. Join us this week as Dr. Deb shares how you can improve your weight and your life for good!

Maintaining a positive body image without using food to numb yourself or congratulate yourself

Reframing menopause as a time of catalyst

The absence of self compassion and how our thoughts impact our well being

Being a Body Whisperer

The brain science behind menopause and weight loss

Time Stamps:
3:00 – How did Dr. Deb find herself working in menopause?
7:00 – The Wisdom of the Body
9:00 – Actions we take to sabotage ourselves
12:00 – Shifting the vicious cycle of negative self talk
15:00 – What are some of the common struggles for women with menopause? 16:30 – Being a Body Whisperer
20 – Menopause as a transformative window
23 – The brain science behind menopause and diet
26 – Developing new neural pathways

Quotes:
3:00 “The thing you struggle with the most is also the thing you want to help people with the most.”

5:00 “Realizing that weight loss has nothing to do with food, it has everything to do with how you think and feel about yourself and number two, menopause is like transformation time. It is time to do what you always knew you needed to do but hadn’t done.”6:43 “I think the most basic connection we have as human beings is the connection to our body and the most basic connection is hunger, eating when you’re hungry. It’s the most basic thing and most women that I work with do not have that connection.”

7:40 “As a chiropractor, I worked with so many people who decided to take care of their body when it was screaming with pain, not when their bodies were whispering with pain…Our body talks to us, it tells the most basic things, the most basic information that if we listen to it, we have a really good chance of being healthy and we learn at a very early age how to stop listening to that. Then we hit menopause and we have to connect to our bodies, our bodies are begging us and many of us have no clue what that means and it’s a huge wake up call.”

8:30 “Maybe more as women than men, have been taught things that take us away from our own bodies, you know, like striving, accomplishing things at our own expenses, taking care of other people without paying attention to what we need as if that’s the best thing that we can do. Being selfless, putting ourselves on the back burner and putting everyone else in front of us as if that’s what a good girl should do.”

9:30 “I don’t know that we’re in a culture that supports a woman taking care of herself first, it’s really something that needs to be taught and I think probably the biggest thing that needs to be taught is self love and self compassion. I think we know how to be compassionate toward other people but I don’t think we know how to use compassion on ourselves, how to be kind to ourselves.”

11:15 “What one says to themselves all the time is ‘It’s not good enough. You should be doing more. What’s the matter with you?’ As opposed to applauding yourself to all you…It leaves us with feelings of feeling inadequate with ourselves because of what we tell ourselves and we don’t have to be talking to ourselves like that.”

14:00 “The thoughts that we have about ourselves usually have been wired pretty strongly in our brains and once we’re aware what we’re thinking that’s probably the biggest “AHA!” is to realize it’s just a thought and you’ve just been thinking it for so long that it’s become a belief system for you.”

19:10 “If we want to proactively age, we better take full responsibility for it now and the only way to do that is to listen to our body!”

20:40 “It’s [menopause] is the most beautiful window that we will ever have and our body is equipped and it’s ready to transform, it’s ready to transition.”

22:42 “I’ve had so many chiropractic patients saying ‘You know I just can’t do what I used to do,’ and I’m going ‘Maybe that’s a good thing!’ That might be a very good thing that you can’t do what you used to do because what you used to do you shouldn’t have been doing to begin with.”

24:26 “The brain is different as you’re going through this [menopause] and I think in some ways it may be even more moldable.”

27 “I can’t think of anything better than for you to be aware of your mind and practicing all the time. It’s the best gift you can give yourself for the rest of yourself is to be aware of your own mind.”